Straight Jacket Type Fun
I have no doubt that other game sites are throwing out stupid taglines in their reviews about how the Godfather game should sleep with the fishes or how it makes gamers an offer they can not or should not refuse. Not only does this show a lack of creativity but it is probably insulting to you, the gamer, whose questions boil down to one basic item: "Is this game worth my damn money?"
To put simply, no I don't think so and nothing pangs me more than to say that. I love, absolutely love, the entire Godfather series of movies. One and two are of course masterpieces of cinema and three, despite not being of the same quality as the first two, still presents a fine performance by the primary actors. You could also argue though, that there exists only four or five other movies which can be considered the equals of the first two Godfather movies but that's another debate entirely.
The problem is not that the entire game is bad. Instead, the problem with the game becomes that the bad things continually overwhelm and dilute the few good things in this game. Take for example, the storyline. It's actually pretty standard stuff for a crime game (murder, robbery, extortion, arson, etc., etc) but when that game puts a huge Godfather fan like myself in the middle of the movie events and gives me the voice acting of such greats as Brando, Caan, and Duvall, then I'm all over this in a big big way. Your character is shown to have a hand in every single major event of the movie as you work your way up the crime family. Who helped weak-willed Fredo get Don Corleone to the hospital after being shot? You and your big Studdebaker. Who helped Rocco get the horse head upstairs to Woltz? You did of course and the Don thanks you.
This continues right up until the end of the game which unfortunately becomes a LOT harder than the rest of the game as if the developers suddenly realized that the game was about to end and endings of games are always supposed to be hard. So rather than let you race from location to location (which is difficult enough), they also throw in mobsters and cops trying to kill you. As if that was not bad enough, the computer controlled bad guys suddenly have turbocharged Edsels that have the ability to turn on a dime, precisely clip your bumper to make you spin out, and somehow -- this was the point where I tossed my mouse down for a few minutes -- I saw a car chasing me hit another car, make four complete spins in about a half second, crash into a wall, and then proceed to continue chasing me without losing a step. Regardless of whether I was driving the slowest vehicle or the fastest vehicle the bad guys would always catch up with me and even surpass me during this end fight. Game endings should be difficult, fine, but such blatant computer cheating completely throws a person out of the game.
The two things I have no problems with in this game are the weapons and the ability to execute people. The weapons are your normal variety of light weapons (pistols), melee weapons (bats, garrote wires) area weapons (dynamite, molotov cocktails), and various other firearms (shotguns and machine guns). As you progress you can upgrade most weapons but in the end you'll mostly be using the assassin pistol which with practice and good aim allows you to drop most bad guys in one or two shots. However, all of the weapons, once upgraded, prove to be useful and needed throughout the game. The shotgun is of course best for close in fighting, the molotovs and dynamite blow up cars for massive area effect damage, and the machine guns, while inaccurate, allow for taking out several enemies (or any civilians who happen to be in the way) at once.
Now the executions are a particular favorite of mine and show that some up and coming developer and animator gave this some extra loving care. Pull out that baseball bat and crack that goon across the knee then stomp his neck. Or punch him in the gut with the butt of your shotgun and when he's cursing your family's name, blast him in the face. It's only business after all. In fact, the game knows it's mafia roots and gives you bonus points for various execution modes. I actually had my sister and her boyfriend checking out this game with me while I tried it for the first time and we all let out an audible "OW!" when my enforcer broke a guy's neck with his bare hands.
But then EA decided that instead of sticking with a storyline which dovetails nicely with the overall movie and letting me execute some people from time to time, the pile a load of crap on top of it. Rather than staying focused with the strong points of the overall Godfather storyline (family, business, politics, and an occasional murder), EA ramped up the murder aspect by about a thousand percent, slapped in some useless side quest of business extortion and to add insult to injury used a graphics engine and aiming system which appear to be about six years out of date.
I'm quite certain that by the end of the game my character's personal body count surpassed the body count of all the major crime bosses in all of American history. Am I trying to become a crime lord or the ruler of a third world country because on my own I'm pretty sure I increased the murder rate of NYC by a factor of 20 in this game.
The side quests regarding business extortion seems trite and in the end quite useless since much more money may be earned by simply finishing the main storyline. The goal of these quests is to convince business owners that they should work with, and contribute to, the Corleone family rather than the other families of NYC. On a smaller scale, this would be perfectly logical. You need to make some cash, so why not go pick on some storefront owner who you can probably bully around for some cash (and is possibly running an illegal front business in the back). But in this game it goes beyond practical and approaches almost farce. First, I believe there exists a total of six unique storefronts (night club, bakery, restaurant, hotel, funeral home, and barber shop) whose interiors are used over and over again. There exists no deviation in their appearance or even the location of the people in the buildings. In fact, the gangster protecting "their" store fronts ALWAYS stand in the same spot, whether it's the bakery in Brooklyn, or the bakery in Hell's Kitchen. If you know where they are in the first store you knocked off, you'll know where they are every time. Therefore, the only thing that can kill you is either a dumb mistake or the quirks of the aiming system.
Which brings me to my next point. Sometimes the auto-aiming system doesn't want to work. Rather than putting the reticle right on the chest it often appears to aim in the general area of your target so you will continue to miss until you release the auto-aim and re-enable it or go to free aim mode which is preferred anyway since with free aim you can easily get headshots (at least with a mouse and keyboard). Also, why can't I switch to first person mode? Would it really be that difficult to institute into a game?
While graphics are never the defining point of a game, the outmoded graphics here can not be ignored. The world textures appear dull and washed out as if someone smeared Vaseline all over them. There's also a distinct lack of depth or appearance of texture on the world graphics. Oddly, the clothing of the characters appears in a similar manner but the actual faces of the characters are highly detailed right down to the teeth. It's reminiscent, to me at least, of the graphics from Soldier of Fortune II. While such graphics were fine six years ago, in this time of games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Medieval 2, having washed out, repetitive, and low resolution graphics like these just seem lazy.
Finally, I have a final question about this game. As you rise in the ranks of the family you find yourself continually going back to the storefronts for extortion or personally handling the knockdown of warehouses or other families. I would ask though, why? If you get to a high enough point in the family shouldn't you be able to direct others to do the actual dirty work? Oh sure, you'd have to slap a few people around from time to time to keep your street cred, but instead of making it a "you against the entire mob world" (resulting in the aforementioned huge body count) why not put in some form of an overarching strategy system which allows you to hire your own personal goonsquad. Take that a step further and it could also allow you to personally command those goons and thugs at a tactical level (think Ghost Recon but for mobsters). I mean did Tesio or Clemenza personally pull the trigger on some mom and pop store for loose change? No, they sent their minions to do it. Sure, Clemenza took care of the head of the Barzini family right at the end of the movie himself but surely lesser jobs can be handled by sub-ordinates.
In fact, take this a step further for overall strategy and you could almost have something akin to the strategy system of Medieval: Total War where you are given free reign to build your own empire but you should NOT do anything to upset the Corleone family lest your feel the wrath of the Don. Or, go ahead and take it a step further and attempt to overthrow the entire Corleone family (and all of the other families). Perhaps all of that is over-reaching though, particularly for a game whose roots appear to be in the GTA style of play.
I understand EA already have plans for two more Godfather games but unless the overall game system is changed, I personally won't have much do with it. Sorry EA, I know you don't care about my opinion, but you really need to flesh this game out more to make it worthwhile to a Godfather fanboy such as myself.